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Qedward writes "Glyn Moody looks at the proposed EU directive on Data Protection — and how some of the proposed amendments seem to be cut and pasted directly from the American Chamber of Commerce — that well-known European organisation... You might ask, Glyn writes, who are these MEPs representing — some 500 million EU citizens that pay their salary or a bunch of extremely rich U.S. companies intent on taking away our privacy?"Lobbyplag lets you look at which lobbyist wrote each part of the bill. Fears of the U.S. exerting undue influence seem to be justified.

I have no idea of how you guys elect your MEPs, but at least in Finland we have many people from all parties running for the EU parliament. I can vote for any of them. It's true that parties do use the EU parliament as a dumping ground for old politicians, but the lists always contain new names also and I choose who I vote for.

So, maybe you need to vote for some other party or reform the voting in your own country instead?

Lobbyists are people who try to influence members of the parliament. In former times they were allowed to enter the lobby of the House of Commons in England to meet sympathetic members of the House between sessions, thus the name.
If you write to your congress critter, you are lobbying. If you discuss with them in town hall meetings, you are lobbying. If you talk to them in private, you are lobbying. Anything you do between elections to influence members of the parliament is lobbying. Do you really want to get rid of that?

Bribery is only needed by bad lobbyists. The ones that are good at their jobs, like the MPAA and RIAA, appear to be representatives of an industry and therefore experts on a particular subject. Politicians are not expected to be experts on everything, they are expected to be willing to take advice from experts. When they need to draft a new law, the solicit the opinions of experts. The competent lobbyists have already insinuated themselves into the system and so are invited, as experts, to provide opinions to the politicians. Some of them really are experts, others are paid shills. The politicians, not being experts, are usually not able to distinguish the two.